


The Leavetaking

by Wittyandcharming



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4304487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wittyandcharming/pseuds/Wittyandcharming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wives implore Furiosa to leave and take them with her, but only one of them makes the right case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Leavetaking

It was Angharad that asked her first. But then, it was always Angharad that made the first step, no matter the cause or question. It was nothing conscious, Furiosa knew, but when you had been chosen to bear the most misery, you learned to step quickly before it came for you again.

When Furiosa made no answer, it was The Dag that asked her next. Shoeless and pale, limbs ranging for days, her white hair rippling down her shoulders like smoke someone had captured and let spill. Her words, a half-growled plea, were less spoken than spat, and the Imperator could see the hope Angharad had planted bloom in her unblinking eyes. Her voice had never sounded like that before, not to Furiosa. It had always been whispering, soft, even when the words she used were bitter or sardonic. She used none of that softness now, the years of her bondage igniting her like the brand each one of them had felt at their necks. 

Cheedo was silent, her fear ticking at Furiosa’s consciousness like a tap left dripping. She didn’t need words to say that she didn’t really want to go. And Toast had been adamant, an overtaking wave to Cheedo’s quiet hesitation, lapping at her with reason, a steady flow meant to erode stubborn mountains. It was unfortunate, then, that Furosia had only steel left, and it all had been galvanized long ago.

But in all this noise, insistent and carefully quiet, it was Capable that finally convinced her to go. Not with her words, nor with her eyes. Not even with her silence. It was her hair, red hair, brighter than blood, brighter than any other memory Furiosa still held onto. Red hair, bright even in the darkness, even from a distance, from her seat in the Rig while a handful of nameless War Boys dragged a young girl from a battered car and kicked aside the broken bodies of her mother and sister. 

The next time Furiosa saw that girl, she was not the same. Eyes in the rearview had been the purest terror she’d ever seen, but she’d watched them harden with every mile she drove. It didn’t matter to either of them that this had never been the reason she was there, never been the way she’d wanted to spend the precious gasoline in her tank. And when she saw her next in that cool, pristine vault, Capable was as different as anyone who still looked the same could be. She had seen years in a week, and it left her serious and watchful, her face a smooth mask wreathed in vibrant waves. It was the same now, that face, as her sisters pried at the woman with traces of axle grease still across her brow. Furiosa barely heard them. She found Capable’s steady green eyes and knew she remembered. She was the only one left in Furiosa’s world with whom she shared any memory at all, and it could not be that one. It would not be that one. 

So she hushed all their voices with a hand in the air, her breath hovering somewhere with theirs in the silence, and at last she shared with them a memory she had kept in her heart as it gathered dust on the road, a memory of ubiquitous green, and a land of many mothers.


End file.
